Gleichschaltung was a blueprint for dictatorship. It meant “coordination” in Nazi Germany, but not the kind that helps people cross a street or plan a bake sale. It was the systematic, violent, and sweeping alignment of all institutions—political, cultural, judicial, educational—under one Führer, one ideology, and zero dissent. Today, Trump is breathing new life into that term, dragging it out of history’s mass grave and fitting it with a red trucker hat.
What Gleichschaltung did for Hitler, Trump wants for himself. Purging disloyal bureaucrats? Gleichschaltung. Gutting civil service protections so he can replace career officials with fealty-puking cronies. Demanding the DOJ and FBI become his personal enforcers, treating enemies like traitors and traitors like martyrs. Screaming “deep state” every time someone in government remembers they swore an oath to the Constitution.
Project 2025 is a fascist cosplay with a strategy manual. Dismantle the administrative state. Purge the judiciary. Militarize executive power. Install ideological foot soldiers in every agency with loyalty oaths and MAGA litmus tests.
He’s already signaled the playbook. In Trump’s America, loyalty to law is betrayal. Loyalty to Trump is law. He doesn’t want checks and balances—he wants servility in khakis and earpieces. He wants to rule a movement that crushes institutions into mirrors of his ego. The GOP has become the Gleichschaltung Party.
Gleichschaltung was how the Nazis turned democracy into dictatorship without needing to burn the Reichstag twice (Jan 6 was the 1st time here). Trump has learned the same lesson: hollow the system from within, staff it with yes-men, and call it “America First.” Strip away autonomy, fuse church and state, privatize punishment, and terrorize truth.
What we are watching is not a political movement. It’s a fascist transplant with a bad comb-over, grifting the soul of American democracy while blaring Lee Greenwood through a bullhorn.
We See What Others Cannot